Points in Time

Rating:
Summary: Bowled Over
Review: A short novel of stunning concision -- liberating his work from the millstone of fixed character POV or time, Bowles jumps between vastly different ages (while maintaining his chosen setting: North Africa) with breathtaking fluency and a near- total disregard for realist conventions. This short novel, acclaimed by many as a masterpiece, ought to have inspired a revolution in storytelling: it is as explosive, in its own way, as Breton's *Nadja*. Instead, it simply sank from view. Some of the sections are only as long as a paragraph; others are bona fide short stories. But what endures in the mind is the way that Bowles' writing shifts, as if by magic, into the most voluptuous shapes.